


I Fought The Law

by Bonymaloney



Series: Fighting It At Every Turn [7]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Bi Max, Childhood Memories, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex, Introspection, Nightmares, post Fallbrook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:13:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23130754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonymaloney/pseuds/Bonymaloney
Summary: His sheer desperate need to see the Equation in all its glory was the very reason he would be denied. It was bitter and elegant, as were so many of the Architect’s designs.
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Series: Fighting It At Every Turn [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629799
Kudos: 13





	I Fought The Law

The Vicar of Max’s township when he was growing up was Benjamin Stryker. He made the same stupid joke about rejecting nominative determinism every time he came to the school for Scripture class. But when Max knocked on the Mission door he asked him to come in and told him he could call him Vicar Ben. 

He lead Max through to his office, had him sit in a red padded leather chair. Max was at the stage where his arms and legs were too long for him, and at home he always seemed to be either perching or slouching against the wooden furniture. This was different, this was a chair he could relax in; only he couldn’t relax, because the Vicar was watching him from behind his desk with a calm smile, and he’d been sent to the Vicar for extra study because he was chaotic. 

“I know what you did, Maximillian; I won’t shame you by making you confess to it again. But I will ask you why you did it.”

Max clenched his fists, pressing his lips together. His voice was changing, and it might betray him by cracking at any moment. He couldn’t have the Vicar think he was crying. 

“He made me angry,” he said eventually. 

Vicar Ben nodded. 

“His jaw has been wired; and his father has indentured himself to pay for it. Because of this treatment, he will recover, and be able to eat and talk. He will take his aptitude test, and begin his life as a productive worker. If he had died, that debt would be on your hands. Do you understand?”

Max clenched his jaw and nodded. He wanted to fight, or to run. He wanted more than anything not to cry, but his eyes felt hot and itchy anyway. 

“They tell me you are quick in school; and a fine tossball player. I think you have potential, Maximillian. Whatever your place in the Plan is, I believe you will fulfil it well, if you can master your temper. Reason, not emotion; although that is easier said than done, sometimes.”

He stood, and reached into the desk drawer beside him. 

“Let us start from the beginning. What is the first Pillar of Scientism?”

“ _Survival of the fittest; nature abhors equality; the strong survive and the weak perish_ ,” Max replied promptly, and the Vicar smiled at him. 

“Well done! You won’t need these to help you then, although you can have them anyway.”

He handed Max a set of prayer beads, inscribed with the six Pillars. They were smooth and heavy, and although they were simple, Max knew he’d never seen anything more finely made in his life. 

“I understand - about the debt - but _I’m_ strong, and he was weaker than me! He shouldn’t have messed with me.”

“Ah.” Vicar Ben sat back and thought for a moment. “Consider a Primal, Max. If you were to go outside the walls and encounter a Primal, would you be able to defeat it in a fist fight? No, it would destroy you. Or me, or even Constable Barker. So does that mean that a Primal is superior to a human being?”

Max’s eyes widened. “No,” he scoffed. “But I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t go outside the walls anyway, I know that’s wrong; but if I did, I'd have a weapon, a gun. People with me and such.”

“Precisely. You would prepare for your battle, and you would approach it rationally. That ability makes humanity superior to the beasts of the field, and it will make you superior to lesser men. That is how you become the fittest; _that_ is how you prevail.”

Max was stunned and full of revelation. He had always despised meditation, but when Vicar Ben suggested it he closed his eyes and considered a pyramid; felt the smooth cool beads in his hands. The red haze that had danced behind his eyes just out of view for as long as he could remember receded, and he was left calm and empty. 

“Are you hungry?” the Vicar asked him eventually, and Max’s eyes snapped open. He was always hungry. 

The plate was huge; full of mock apples, sliced bred, salty curds and tangy Tartarus sauce. Vicar Ben talked to him while he ate, about production quotas and logistical problems with Groundbreaker. Like he was a grown man. 

When it was time to leave, he went to give the beads back, but the Vicar waved him away. 

“Keep them. Meditate on the second pillar; and we’ll talk about it the next time you visit.”

When Max looked back on that day, he remembered the calm and contentment he’d experienced, the sense of peace. He also remembered the warm comfortable room, the big desk covered in rich wooden sculptures and delicate scientific equipment. The two things were linked in his mind, so deeply he wasn’t aware of it; even though he would always recall it as the moment he decided what his life was supposed to be. 

Five years later he was back in the same office, pacing as Vicar Ben looked up at him with a sad smile. Max had shaved and scrubbed at himself, using three days worth of his water ration, but he could still feel grit between his teeth, under his nails - it was never gone. His knees and his back and his neck hurt all the time. Max was happy to risk life and limb in the glorious heat of a fight or a tossball match; but his work was dirty, boring, repetitive stuff, and he was supposed to let it destroy his body as well as his mind. 

“I need to realise my purpose through scientific achievement! How can I do that here?”

“Humanity needs to realise our purpose. What role you as an individual might play in that is not for you to decide.”

“But I could do so much more! I could _be_ so much more! These idiots around me couldn’t possibly - “

The Vicar frowned and raised a finger in warning. 

“Those idiots include your parents.”

“I want to be like my parents! They’re so happy, all the time… I need to _understand_ the Plan, that’s all, and then I can be like that too.”

“Max… you can’t reason your way into believing. You have to feel it.”

Stryker was an old man, and Max was approaching the prime of his life. It wasn’t until he stood over him, staring down at the red pulp that used to be a face, that Max realised what he’d done, and his bloodlust faded as shame welled up in him. He stood frozen until a sudden flash illuminated the room. Startled, he stared out of the window. Instead of the Mission gardens, he saw streaks of lightning, pink like an angry wound, arcing down from the perpetually roiling clouds...

Max gasped and sat up, choking back a horrified yell as he fought the blanket away from his body. He was covered in oily sweat, and his hands and his jaw hurt from how tightly they were clenched. 

That wasn’t what had happened. Instead, this time, he had let Stryker see him crying. 

“I want to... I want to feel the way I felt when we used to meditate. When I study I can feel it, and then… please. You could sponsor me.”

Sponsorship was the process by which OSI clergy recommended people to enter the seminary and train to become their replacements. They were supposed to identify and carefully vet the young candidates, who once selected, would bypass aptitude testing. In practice, most Vicars sponsored their children. Max’s desperation was heartfelt and utterly sincere, but even so a small detached part of him was aware he was being manipulative, realising that violence with words was a thing that he could do, and assessing how effective it had been. 

The old man had never had children of his own. 

“Isadora will kill me,” he’d sighed, and then he looked Max directly in the eyes. “This is a decision based on emotion, not reason,” he said quietly, and he’d pressed his electronic seal to his terminal, transmitting the message that recommended Max for entry into the OSI. He’d said something else too, but Max couldn’t make it out over the roar of triumph in his ears. 

His pulse was pounding in his ears again now, but he felt himself gradually calming, his disorientation fading. It was a bad dream, nothing more. Probably brought on by sleeping in his armour, or the sulphur in the air, or the fact that he was lying on rocks in the back of a cave on fucking Monarch. He squinted against the light of the fire and looked around him. The cave was shallow, almost a perfect circle. Ms Ramnarim-Wentworth lay curled on her side, head resting on her pack as she snored. Next to her, Millstone was asleep with his blanket over his face. There was an empty bedroll at the base of the opposite wall. 

The Captain sat in the mouth of the cave with her back straight and poised, looking out across the blasted plain that lay between them and their destination. Her braid hung down her back, a bolt of dark heavy silk. Her sword was at her left hip, a bottle of some caffeinated drink rested on the ground by her foot. She was facing away from him, sparing her night vision from the fire, and Max was relieved. He didn’t need her to know he’d whimpered like a fucking child, all because of a nightmare. 

“Everything ok back there,” she asked without turning her head, and he cursed. 

“I just - bathroom,” he grunted, and was then left with no choice but to drag himself to his feet. He was deeply aware of the fact he was leaving the circle of safety and light, and the skin on the back of his neck prickled as he pissed up against a misshapen tree. 

“Don’t forget to wash your hands,” she said as he returned, and Max’s lip curled. He hated knowing he couldn’t get properly clean until they were back on board the Unreliable - even the potable water on Monarch stank - and Pearl fucking knew it. It was petty and spiteful, and he knew that if he pointed that out to her she would have plenty to throw back in his face. He bit his tongue and instead offered an olive branch. 

“I expect I’ll be awake for a while now… would you like me to take the rest of your watch?” 

“Nah, I’m good. Got half an hour to go, then it’s Felix, then Nyoka’s bringing us home.” She drew her sword and held it up, twisting it idly from side to side and watching the firelight flicker on the blade. 

“I’ll be damned to the fucking Void if I let a drunkard and a moron watch my back while I sleep!”

Truth be told, Ms Ramnarim-Wentworth was highly competent when she was sober, and Millstone possessed the strong survival instinct of a sprat. They were more than adequate guards. It was the fact that they must know he didn't have a shift to watch, and that they were therefore more trusted than he was, that crawled beneath his scalp. 

“So stay awake then,” Pearl shrugged. She sheathed the sword, took up her scope and swept her gaze across the dark horizon. 

Max wished he’d never found Chaney. Wished he was sharing the watch with the Captain, regaling her with all he knew of Alta-Vitae; sharing a nice warm bedroll with her afterwards too. He also wished he could go back to Fallbrook and kill Chaney all over again but slower this time. 

He shouldn’t have kissed her, shouldn’t have done any of it; but she was irresistible. He’d tried at first to fuck his anger into her, the way he had with Sadik. The barber had devoutly submitted to Max’s darker passions, and he still felt the crawling sensation in his guts at the moment he’d realised Sadik thought he deserved it. He’d ended it, and never cared to ask what the man had done that made him think he’d earned his punishment. Max hadn’t loved him, but he’d thought that Sadik _understood_ him, and so he was heartbroken none the less.

Pearl never submitted. She either fiercely opposed him or she cleaved to him with equal enthusiasm, lifting them up into synergy. When they lost themselves in each other it felt like the purest expression of the Plan, molecules binding and synapses firing with no conscious thought required, suffusing him with ecstasy that briefly, blissfully washed away all traces of doubt. It was simply too beautiful to risk introducing another variable, such as telling her of his actual intentions once he found Chaney.

So he hadn’t told her, she had brought him to Fallbrook, and everything had unfolded from there. Maybe the truth was that he couldn’t stop himself because he was never meant to. His sheer desperate need to see the Equation in all its glory was the very reason he would be denied. It was bitter and elegant, as were so many of the Architect’s designs. He knew he should take comfort in the idea that there was some purpose to his violent nature, even if he might never understand it; but it would mean turning his back on the thing he’d spent his life pursuing, and in the meantime his Captain wouldn’t even look at him. 

He wished for an attack; for Marauders to swarm the camp so that he could fight and hurt and prove his worth to them all; but the night remained quiet. Max stalked back to his bedroll full of acid rage, convinced he wouldn’t sleep. He was fucking ruled by his emotions, he had to accept that now, and his only hope was that his violence might work in accordance with the Plan and not against it. And that he could crack that terminal asunder the way he’d promised. But ultimately, what his body craved more than anything was a full night’s sleep. He had a brief moment of clarity where he understood that what he actually felt was sorrow, before his heavy limbs dragged him down. 

She’d been trying to see him in the reflection on her blade, he realised at some point the next morning, but by then they were approaching Cascadia and there was no chance to think.


End file.
